Chapter Four

 

Kapotnya (Moscow)

 

Anatoly looked out the window of his Land Rover as it escorted him down the MDK beltline. It was a dreary Wednesday afternoon, and the smoke of the Moscow Oil Refinery billowed up between spurts of hot fire into the polluted atmosphere and darkened the gloomy horizon.

He and his men were headed to the Kapotnya district. It was a place that he had not visited in many years, and though it was one of the poorest and most crime infested areas in all of Moscow, it was his home.

Running his hands over the console, he let his window down and smelled the air. As thick, strong contaminants filled the back of the SUV, he closed his eyes and thought of his last drive down this stretch of highway away many years ago.

He had left hastily with a pocket of cash and a garbage bag of clothes.

His mother had given him all the money that they had in savings and begged him to go to the USA to find his father. “Find Dmitry,” she urged in his box of a bedroom with a hand of waded-up rubles that were stained with smut from hiding them in the fireplace as she stood in a work smock. Lips twisted and eyes full of pain, she packed his things quickly and kissed him on his cheek before she sent him away.

He remembered that fateful night out in the courtyard of their impoverished apartment complex when he shot a man dead by the swing set. He was only 18 then and full of rage. His mother had worried that he would be sent to prison or worse. And while he did not fear his future, she did. Little did she know that he had been in a gang since he was ten years old.

To go to prison would have simply puthim on a quicker path to the Vory and gained him more respect, but she told him that he would face a fate worse than being a Vor if he stayed. “You must go,” he remembered her saying. “And you must never, ever come back, Anatoly – not even when I die.”

She had always feared for her eldest son – a blonde, stout, quiet young man with eyes full of rage and a heart full of malice. And she did right to do so.

His first murder had been one of necessity.

The forty-year-old man he had slain had eyes set on his sister, a girl barely twelve.

When Anatoly saw the man rubbing his sister’s hair on the swing and offering her a piece of candy to go up to his apartment for a while, he shot him.

It had been a quick, respectful death – more than the man had deserved. He never got a chance to tell his mother that part - that the man had been a letch. Instead, like always, he kept his secrets. Besides, they all thought that he had gone mad. And maybe they were right, but that man would never have his sister.

Since he had come to the states, however, only one other murder had been a necessity. It was a shame that one had been his uncle. He looked down at his hands as he thought of the day that he put a bullet through Ivan’s back in his father’s mansion and watched the giant’s body fall forward. That day, he knew that he was a murderer, because before then he had never enjoyed murder, but after that, he had.

“Boss, do you really want to go inside of apartment? There is a group there now. They cleared the hallways just in case for you. But the place is a real shit hole,” Vasily informed him, looking back at his young boss sitting in a daze.

“Why wouldn’t I want to go up there?” Anatoly asked. “I came all this way, didn’t I?” His blue eyes were ice cold.

Vasily didn’t respond. He simply looked over at the driver and nodded. Anatoly eyed them both for a moment, then averted his gaze back out of the window. He rode the rest of the way with a clear mind and thought of nothing.

***

The residents of the small, impoverished community gathered curiously as the convoy of luxury vehicles pulled in front of Anatoly’s old apartment building.

Quickly, men began to file out and stand on both sides of the cars before Anatoly’s door was opened. The grand show made him mildly embarrassed.

He paused as he looked out of the truck and then proceeded to step out and look around. Amazingly, nothing had changed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Vasily stood by him looking around like a secr service agent on duty for the President.

Again, one more thing to further embarrass Anatoly as he and his entourage made their way through the crowds to the tall, bricked building that housed his mother’s belongings.

Someone called out his name from afar, but he didn’t bother to look up. He was certain that many people from around this place remembered him.

Many, before he left, had told him how he would never amount to anything. Look at me now, he thought. And they did look. Only even in their wonderment, they were afraid.

Word traveled fast, and the word was that the Boss had come to Kapotnya to pay respects to a woman whom he had abandoned in her final hours.

If his callousness had not been evident before, it was now. He didn’t even care for family. A true Vor. Only true to the code.

The thought sent chills through his body. If they only knew that she would not have him, that she was so proud of what he had become until she didn’t want him to ever look back at where he had come from, maybe then they wouldn’t judge him so harshly.

Then words from his father filled his head. Without Dmitry being there to physically say it, he heard him. “You don’t owe these bastards an explanation. Pay your final respects and move on.”

He did just that. Lifting his head, he moved up the concrete steps with his men to the fourth floor with the speed of a lion.

It wasn’t that he was afraid to be in a very vulnerable position of staircases and sure doom if caught in an ambush, it was simply that he wanted this over with...done and finished.

With halogen lights blinking and the smell of old urine in trash-filled corners, with people opening their doors and looking out of their peepholes, he passed quickly through the now guarded hallway to his mother’s apartment.

The door was already open and his men stood inside and out with guns, protecting him from everything except his fear of what awaited him on the other side of the door.

Quietly, he walked inside of the dingy, dark apartment and ordered the men to leave. He stood in the box of a living room as they cleared the apartment and left. He didn’t turn to see the door close, but he heard it, heard his men barking for the residents to stay out of the hallways, not to come any farther. He smirked, then turned his attention to his old home.

In the silence of the room, he heard the raggedy ceiling fan rattling only inches above him. The cool, stale air eased the sweat on his brow.

He slipped his hands in his pockets and surveyed the room. Not much had changed,e doopt the pictures on small wooden tables. He kneeled down and looked. Could it be? His little sister had grown all the way up. She was beautiful, even more so than when she was a young child. Reaching out, he ran his hand very gently over the dusty frame and debated whether he should take it or not.

“I was 15 in that picture,” a woman’s voice said from the far corner. A smile nearly colored her broken accent.

Anatoly looked up from the picture at the wall. Standing back up, he was slow to turn around. He heard her feet walking over the old, stained shag carpet. Suddenly, he was no longer a boss, just a boy standing face-to-face with is little sister in his mother’s house.

“It’s been long time, Anastasiya,” he said, preparing to hug her, if she would just move closer to him.

He committed her every feature to memory. Long, bone-straight, blonde hair. Pale skin only interrupted by rosy, high cheeks. Full pink lips curved into a heart shape. Bright, big blue eyes. Skinny frame. Petite. She had grown into a simple woman. She wore a long denim skirt and a plain white cotton shirt.

With no makeup, he could see dark circles under her angelic eyes. “You’re still as beautiful as I remember,” he confessed. He bowed his head in respect.

“I’m surprised that you remember anything,” she said frowning. Leaning against the doorway, she held tight to the Bible in her hand. “The rest of the family is already at the church. No one wanted to wait for you.”

Anatoly looked up surprised. “Why are you so angry with me?” He was dumbfounded by her reaction to his presence.

“It’s not me who is angry with you, Anatoly. It is God,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“For not being there for mat'?”

She shook her head in disgust. “No. For doing the devil’s work each and every day. But I’m praying for you, brat. I’m praying that God will help you, heal you. Right now, you think that you’re really big man, because you have so many lost boys to follow you and die for you and kill for you. But soon, you will see the error in your ways. I only hope that after you do, you will fall on your knees and beg Him for His divine mercy.”

Anatoly was speechless. Something humbled him. He didn’t shout at her, tell her that his road started trying to save her. Instead, he simply smiled. “I’m glad to know that you are safe and well, syestra,” he said, trying to mask his pain with sarcasm. “Since the family has already gone without me, I suspect that I should head over to the church for my mother’s funeral.”

“Yes,” she said, walking closer to him. “This is for you.” She passed him her brown, leather-bound Bible.

He took it in his hands, brushing hers as he did. They looked at each other for a moment, eye-to-eye.

“It is the same one that helped me find my way. I hope that it helps you find yours in time,” she said, pulling away.

“Can I offer you a ride?” he asked, unsure of what to say.

“No. I said my goodbyes to mat' at hospital,” she smiled. “I don’t plan to go to funeral. I took care of her alone until her death. What is left at the church is only memories, and I do not care to remember her in casket.” Touching his face gently with her cold, boney fingers, she gave a crooked smile and turned to walk to the door.

“But I have so many questions,” Anatoly whispered. He looked down at the floor and tried to bare the pain of feeling the separation from her with every step that she took.

“There are no answers here for you, brat.” With that and without looking back, she opened the front door and left.

***

The church was smaller than he remembered. This had been a place that he had visited many Sundays as a young boy, yet he felt like a stranger inside of it now. Begrudgingly reminiscing over his childhood and his saint of a mother, he sat in the front pew with his estranged sisters and brothers as the priest talked.

He was too strong and too proud to dare let a tear drop from his tired eyes, but his heart was heavy. And it was suddenly apparent to him how mortal he was and how unloved he was by so many that he genuinely care for.

Looking forward with his eyes focused on the casket, he would not lay eyes on his family, who stared at him in between their sobs like he was a leper.

He knew from his brief, painful moments with Anastaysia what they all thought of him. Scum. Dirt. Thug. He wondered now if their animosity stemmed from their lack luster lives that consisted of mundane existences his mother had inadvertently saved him from or because he had returned and reminded them of that fact.

In his mind, on the trip to Moscow, he imagined that they might at least be a little proud of him or at least happy that he had survived. Unfortunately, his imagination had not yielded realistic results.

His little brother, Immanuil, sat furthest from him stealing glances that didn’t exactly mirror the family’s consensus of utter hatred. Anatoly could tell that he so wanted to reach out to him. His mossy green eyes sparkled when he saw him as he entered the sanctuary, but his middle brother held him back with a firm grip and admonishing words that he hissed in the little boy’s ear.

"3"> Arseny, his middle brother, was a constant reminder of why he hated this place. They barely spoke to each other, even after many years of separation, and in fact, he still did not call when their mother passed. Arseny was a prick like that. A devoted Catholic. A straight-laced, pussy with good grades and a bad physique who hid his shortcomings with sharp wit and a community-college degree that he held with the esteem of a Harvard cum laude graduate. They were complete opposites of each other in every way, and they both hated each other for it.

In the back of the church, the doors flung open, bringing with it the light of day. Attention turned from the lonely casket and the drawn up ceremony at the front to the parade of men in the back. Anatoly clenched his jaw and turned to see Davyd, his father’s head bodyguard enter with his men and then a long, processional of Russian mafia elite, including his father, who carried his little sister, Anya, in his arms and his wife, Royal, on his arm.

Dressed in designer black and looking more regal than anyone else besides Anatoly in the entire church, they made their presence known. The whispers quickly turned into a low rumble by the small crowd as the pseudo-royalty proceeded to the very front with such audacity, it was perceived as pure entitlement.

Anatoly could feel the scowl on his brother’s face, even without turning around, but how he enjoyed it. Even the priest stopped talking and looked on baffled. The seven-foot tall, blonde notorious boss of Moscow slipped into the pew behind his son with his family and members of council in tow and sat down, while his twenty-man crew disbursed around the church.

Leaning forward and ignoring the attention, his father put his hand on Anatoly’s shoulder.

“Sorry that we are so late. Forgive my interruption. There was delay with my jet,” Dmitry said gracefully. He looked down the pew at his son’s brother and gave him a how-dare-you-look-at-me scowl and then turned his attention back to his son.

Arseny quickly averted his startled eyes to the front of the church again as his heart pounded out of his chest. He had never once seen the Boss in person, now to be so close was surreal.

“It is no interruption, papa,” Anatoly said, patting his father’s hand. “I am happy that you are here.” He turned and looked at the man in his face. He wanted his father to know his sincerity.

“What did you expect? We support our own, especially during bereavement.” Dmitry did not say it, but he knew that something had gone awfully wrong in his absence, and he intended to rectify any misperception that he would allow any disrespect of his son or the Vory v Zakone.

“Hi, Anatoly,” his little sister Anya waved, unable to hold her peace. “Can I sit up there with you?”

Anatoly smiled. He was relieved in ways words would simply not describe. “Da, come here,” he said, reaching for her. Picking the small three-year-old up, he pulled her across the pew and put her on his ap. She rustled around in her black lace dress and put her brother’s arms around her. Resting her head on his chest, she ran her small fingers up and down his arm and kicked her legs happily.

“Be good, Anya,” Royal warned barely above a whisper. “Remember what we talked about in the car. This is your brother’s time...not yours.” Dmitry’s beautiful young wife’s Southern American English accent drew even more attention.

It wasn’t enough that she was a breathtaking black woman dressed to the hilt with an air of entitlement that rivaled Putin’s, but she also flickered with every turn due to the many diamonds that her husband had adorned her with.

“I will, Mommy,” Anya answered obediently. She bent to her brother’s ear and whispered. “Mommy brought you a present to make you feel better.”

“Did she?” Anatoly humored her. “Well, we’ll get it after, eh?”

Anya nodded her head and turned her attention to the priest.

Suddenly, Anatoly did not feel alone anymore. His real family had finally arrived and in undeniable style.

***

At the burial site, as Anatoly came to grips with final thoughts of his mother, he wiped his tears and looked up from the lowering casket to see his father with his eyes planted on an individual across the small crowd.

Because of Dmitry’s height, he could see over the people directly to one man of comparable height across from them. Their eyes were deadlocked on one another with menacing stares – a conversation taking place without words. He looked around to see Dmitry’s men making their way to the man, slowly and undetected by the others. A sense of sudden urgency overwhelmed him. A sense of anger filled him.

Was he not even allowed to grieve, to just be a regular person at his own mother’s funeral? Was there ever a day that he could just be? The answer was obviously no. There was nothing normal about a Vory, especially a boss.

As the priest told them to go in peace, Anatoly’s thoughts went to the gun in its holster under his suit jacket. He motioned for his men to follow his father and was mildly angry that he had not spotted him on his own.

The crowd disbursed, and Anatoly’s estranged family moved quickly from his presence and disappeared into the cars lined up along the cemetery road. He did not even get a chance to say goodbye. It would have been frivolous anyway. Instead, he followed his father, who bolted across the burial site to the man and grabbed him by his arm.

“Who are you,” Dmitry demanded in a low deep growl.

The man looked up with a mischievous smile. He didn’t have to look too far up, because he was almost Dmitry’s height and size. He lled away carefully and cleared his throat.

“Gabriel,” he said in an American English accent.

Gabriel’s men gathered around, along with Dmitry’s men and Anatoly’s men. They were making a spectacle, preparing for war.

Royal, Dmitry’s wife, grabbed her young daughter and was escorted by her bodyguard, Davyd, back to her car. She knew a problem when she saw one after many years of being married into such a complicated family.

Dmitry looked back as his limo pulled away with his wife. Clever Royal. He smiled, relieved that his wife knew his place and relieved because in her absence, his cuffs were off.

“Gabriel who?” he said, pointing for the man to walk as they talked. Their small entourage followed behind them.

“Medlov,” the man answered. “Gabriel Medlov.” A smile colored his lips. With a twinkle in his eye, he turned on the Medlov charm.

“Impossible,” Anatoly scoffed, looking up at the man.

“Hardly,” Gabriel answered Anatoly. His voice was a deep, hollow baritone that carried in the wind. He stopped and turned towards the two confronting men. “My father was Ivan Medlov...your brother, I believe.” He looked at Dmitry. “And your uncle,” he said, looking at Anatoly.

Dmitry stopped and looked the young man in the eyes. They were mossy green with sparkles of deep blue hidden under long, dark lashes. His hair was wavy, short black. His skin was pale, only colored by the redness of irritation. He had striking features like his father – prominent cheek bones, a wide chiseled jaw, a perfectly slender nose, thick, naturally arched black eyebrows and perfectly white, sparkling teeth clenched under full lips that narrowed at the bottom. A hint of freckles colored his face. And most shockingly, he had his father’s smirk.

Dmitry believed Gabriel. He believed that he was looking at his nephew, at his brother’s son, even without proof, but he went through the formalities. It would be just like some police agency to send a look-alike to infiltrate his organization.

He stepped back a bit and looked at the man, sized him up. The boy was about six feet, seven inches tall. He had a wide, bulky frame that he hid under a black, tailored suit. And he had the Medlov stance – confident, cocky, unmoved.

“Why haven’t I heard of you before?” Dmitry asked.

“My father didn’t think that it was smart to tell you about me,” he said, looking at Anatoly. “Wow, the apple truly did fall far from the tree that time, didn’t it?” He looked at the shorter, stocky blonde boss and suddenly felt a bit of superiority. Anatoly was barely six-feet tall. To call him a Medlov was almost blasphemous.

Anatoly grinned. “I’ll have your head for dinner if you say one more fucking word.” Opening his coat pocket, he flashed a shiny blade. “Your papa ever show you how one of these works? You put in to the neck and slice.”

“Easy boys,” Dmitry said amused. He turned to Gabriel. “Why are you here?”

“I heard that the family had a loss. I’d never really laid eyes on you. I couldn’t help it. I had to come. I was already here on business.”

“What business are you in?” Dmitry asked.

“Are you serious?” Gabriel asked.

“Boy, do not think that I will cut you this much slack,” Dmitry said, putting his thumb and index finger together. “Now answer me.” His voice was firm. “What is your business here?”

Dmitry’s men prepared to pull their guns. Anatoly’s men had already pulled theirs.

Gabriel looked around and decided to defuse the situation. There was no sense of dying on the first meeting. He looked at his men and lowered his hand, ordering them to put away their weapons.

“Down, boys.” He turned and looked at his uncle. “Primarily, identity theft. But I’m dabbling now in guns and...” he laughed. “Meth.” He hunched his shoulders. It was known that the Medlov’s did not deal in drugs or human trafficking.

“Bad cocktail,” Dmitry said, shaking his head. “Where are you based?”

“New York,” Gabriel answered.

“Fucking Liar. If you were there, I would have heard about it,” Anatoly said appalled.

Gabriel looked at Anatoly and raised his brow. The guy had a real chip on his shoulder. “I’ve been there for quite a while, but we don’t run our operations like the old Vor – no disrespect or anything. All of my men have college degrees and professions outside of their professions, if you know what I mean. No one is doing it the old way. We’ve found a new cover, and it works better. It keeps the...cops off of us and our product.”

Dmitry didn’t blink. A million thoughts processed instantly. A college degree? He’s always wanted Anatoly to go to college. He was glad that someone had been able to do both. Relaxing his tense shoulders, he looked over at his son and smiled. “Do you have dinner plans tonight, Anatoly?”

“Da,” Anatoly said snarling.

“Cancel them. You’re going to have dinner with your cousin tonight,” Dmitry ordered.

“What about me? I’ve got plans,” Gabriel said interrupting. He had his father3">? Hewit.

“No, you don’t,” Dmitry said, turning back around to Gabriel. “And if you don’t check out tonight by seven with my men, your smart ass won’t leave this country alive.”

Gabriel swallowed hard but wiped the smirk from his face. “Oh, I’ll check out. Call New York. They refer to me as college boy. They’ll tell you my whole story.” He slipped his balled fists in his pockets. “So where’s dinner, unc?”

Dmitry’s eye flinched at Gabriel’s statement. “My hotel. Seven.”

“Okay. Where’s that?” Gabriel asked, pulling out his Blackberry to type in the address.

“If you’re running shit like you say that you are, you’ll find it on your own and be there on time. If not, I’ll find you, and I’ll be there,” Dmitry said, turning to walk away with his men.

“Nice meeting you,” Gabriel called out as the men left. He could not help but grin to himself.